When you hit the undo button so that your save button shows zero, and then hit the permalink button, does it show the change? I wasn't changing road names, just correcting nodes and deleting extras when I got that message last night. Once I hit permalink, it showed all my changes went thru. I hope.

That is common. Try it by making nodes (40+) with the WME tool (selecting 2 segments and clicking the icon) and then save. One error will appear, then you click save again and you will see the "while you were editing....." message. Once you click permalink, and it reloads the map, the new nodes will be there